The Death of Satan: How Americans Have Lost the Sense of Evil

by Andrew Delbanco

Book Overview

In a spiritual biography of America, Delbanco shows how writers of the past 3 centuries have depicted evil and how they have tried to defy and subdue it. He shows the strategies by which writers such as Cotton Mather, Jefferson and Lincoln, Emerson and Melville, Thoreau and Whitman, Niebuhr and Trilling, Rachel Carson and Susan Sontag, have recognized and done battle with evil. One way of talking about evil is to demonize and satanize it, understanding...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0374135665
• ISBN13: 9780374135669
• Release Date: January 1995
• Publisher: Farrar Straus Giroux
• Length: 274 Pages
• Weight: 1.21 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 6.3" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

Comprehensive, and Thorough

Books about the History of Ideas usually raise the ire of Conservative Christians; this book is no exception. However, it provides a very good analysis of the concept of Satan over time. The Conservatives who pretend to be Christian, whilst eschewing some books like this one, have no qualms in titling a very pro-Republican book THE GREAT RIGHTWING CONSPIRACY so that they can attract, or annoy people of differing political persuasions. This work is a must read for those who want to start understand the form of conceptual interpretation about the nature of evil. As to what is actually behind the evil in the world, I think this book makes no pretense to understand that; it does enlighten on what the conservative, rabid-christian enclaves have placeD into popular culture and how it has fared over time. An excellent book.

A great synthesis of History and Literature

This book takes an interesting look at the way in which the modern world has steadily lost its fear of perpetual damnation since we have begun to pull ourselves out of the pit of a lost history. And, in some regard, Delbanco's thesis holds strong. He points out that the loss of fear and belief in the idea or actuality of Satan (depending on how you look at it) has steadily lost its power since the pilgrims landed on the proverbial Plymouth Rock. This book looks at various ideas about fear, evil and modern cynicism, and it leaves the reader with a choice that seems somewhat miniscule at first, but monumental in the long run: What are we to believe about a concept of evil when our Norh American culture works so hard to rid the world of it? Delbanco points to the rise in trully horrific and violent forms of entertainment in the past century. Overall, it's a great book, with a lot of insight into who we are. Probably, it will be better recieved by religious liberals than cynics and fanatics.